Humanoid robots: It's all in the hips

By Staff, AFP

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Robot researchers in Japan have proved what entertainers from Elvis Presley to Miley Cyrus knew all along: the secret is in the hips.

But where Elvis “The Pelvis” gyrated his way to 1950s fame and one-time child star Cyrus attained instant Internet notoriety with her recent awards show “twerking”, the engineers just wanted to make their robots walk more naturally.

A team of researchers at Waseda University’s Humanoid Robotics Institute, near Tokyo, spent hours analysing how the waist was used to give humans their easy gait.